1 site contaminated? really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_hydraulic_fracturing#Groundwater_contamination

Skimming 3 paragraphs shows 3 sites in the US and I'm sure proper research would turn up a lot more. There is a movie about this (arguably propaganda) called Gasland that I have yet to watch. Considering potable water is a necessary resource, and natural gas is not necessary (although it is important). I am very very wary of the proposition of risking one for another.

Noo it's "Star Trek into Darkness" (note the capitalization) http://xkcd.com/1167/

To be fair the Joker may have been belligerent and annoying. I don't like it when people talk during lectures either. It makes it hard to pay attention. To make it worse they were telling off-color, extra-annoying jokes. There's nothing necessarily sexist or anti-woman about making a dongle joke, but it certainly can make women (or men) feel uncomfortable. It very well may create less friendly environment to some women. That being said, the photograph/tweet response was not terribly appropriate. Neither is she to blame for the consequent firing of photographed employees (except maybe getting herself fired)

Her response could have been to turn around and nicely (or angrily) ask them to be quiet or leave. I don't agree with her approach to solving the problem, but I do not think it is her fault that one of the guys got fired. Perhaps he was otherwise incompetent or was always making stupid jokes that pissed everyone off? Perhaps the guys employer overreacted badly to this incident and then that is really unfortunate. In which case I guess she would share some of the blame with the employer.

So hopefully a good python dev can get a new job. I'm not sure what a technology evangelist does, but I hope she uses better judgement at dealing with similar situations in the future. This sucks. Whenever I go to a tech conference, I get very excited and inpsired by all the good work being done by other people. I will continue to attend conferences for sure and hope they can be a welcoming place for everyone.... even n00bs.

As does abiliy to spell things correctly or write coherently.

Thank you. All Language should have ( ) and && || ||'s. :-D

Thanks I'll check those out. fink works pretty well http://fink.thetis.ig42.org/ . Have not tried homebrew or macports.

I would use OSX a lot more if I could license it (legally giving my money to Apple) to run in a VM on my PC!

I agree with you completely. I really feel like newer Gnome was a major step back (at least for my usability there may be other valid arguments for Gnome 3). Sigh.

I use both OSX (only very recently) and Linux desktops and always felt that the Gnome 2.0 desktop (abandoned by Ubuntu, but still the default for Debian stable for the moment), was the best desktop ever. It was the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS desktop that got be to "betray" my simple and straightforward olvwm solution and now I don't want to switch back to olvwm.

So I'm using LXDE on my Ubuntu desktop (only because I don't want to reinstall with Debian stable). It is OK. I like it more than OSX GUI, but not more than Gnome 2.0. I run OSX on my MacBookAir, but mostly I spend my time in a Debian VM which uses Gnome 2.0. Honestly having only just started using MACs really, and am not part of the group that abandoned Linux in the early 2000's. But Gnome 3.0 etc to me feel like a nudge away from Linux. The wonderful thing about Linux desktops though is the diversity of options, so if you don't like desktop X, you can use desktop Y or dekstop Z.

Hmm while writing this I just did a web search for virtual desktops in OSX (the major feature I miss from Linux when I'm on my macbook air)
http://osxdaily.com/2010/02/01/virtual-desktops-in-mac-os-x/

So OSX might be OK. I still like gnome-terminal and lxterm more than OSX terminal program. And left click should mark stuff, middle mousebutton (or chordmiddle) should paste!

For me the only extension that makes Windows usable at all is cygwin (but I haven't used Windows 8)

Honestly, when using Ubuntu, unless you are willing to troubleshoot problems, you should stick with the LTS releases only. I run the interim releases in VMs, but never on production systems.

I can't speak for Gnome 3 on Fedora, because I have not tried it yet. My strategy (with Ubuntu) has been to use olvwm or LXDE. I really did like Gnome 2 though, but other WMs are fine, and to me they are more easy-to-use than Gnome 3.

First off, I love Perl, but I hate it too. All of my backend code used to be Perl, but I long since abandoned it for Ruby. Now when I have to use Perl, it's usually called from a Ruby script and I real the Perl output into Ruby through JSON.

As far as performance is concerned, i think Python is really a top contender with native thread support, but generally for sysadmin stuff, you don't always need a high-performance solution. For something that is easy-to-write, and easy-to-manage, and almost more importantly easy-to-read-the-code-2-months-later, Ruby is great. I have nothing bad to say about Perl, but there are clearly some advantages (when using objects especially) to Ruby and Python. The Perl community (perlmonks.org) is the best programming community I've ever come across. The only reason I even switched to Ruby was because I believed that Parrot would bring a convergence and interoperabilty between Perl 6, Ruby and Python.

If Perl becomes less relevant in the future it would make me sad.

Am I wrong thinking that this is not dramatically faster than Titan (27 TF peak)
http://www.top500.org/system/177975

The specifications in the doc are interesting nonetheless!

What about ARM? I know amd64 really is the dominant architecture today, but there are lot of really nice 4 watt systems (like Trim Slice/chromebook running Debian/etc) which could replace the x86/amd64 desktop.

Thats true, but if you have to be at work every day, then your only alternative would be to own 2 cars: 1 for good days and 1 for snowy days. Also there is a risk of unpredicted snow (being stuck at work because your SmartCar cannot be driven on unplowed roads). I'm still going with a car that can be both fuel efficient and good in snow.

I drive a VW TDI with low-ground clearance front-wheel drive and 4 studded winter tires. I'm not in Ontario, but I can get around pretty well on unplowed roads here in snowy New England (often better than people with 4wd and all season tires). I admit being higher off the ground would be an advantage (I have a small shovel in the trunk for the rare occasions when I get stuck), but 40+ MPG is an advantage too.